Previously, on Somebody…

911: OK, so you heard two shots fired on the block? 

JUNE: So, when I found out what had happened the first thing I did was reach out to the local gangbangers. Um. None of them took admittance to it.

SHAPEARL: This whole thing, it just gets stranger and stranger by the minute. And so, I have theories in my head. But somebody covering for somebody. 

My name is Shapearl Wells. This is the story of my son Courtney, a young black man in a fancy car, who wound up with a bullet in his back in front of a Chicago police station.

And it’s the story of my search for the truth.

This is Somebody.

 THEME: “Everybody’s Something” by Chance the Rapper

SHAPEARL: So, there’s this thing that I haven’t told you about yet. I didn’t even tell Alison and the Invisible Institute for a long time. 

Because, when it happened, I was told it wasn’t important. 

But it turns out, it was. 

When I first met with police...just a few days after Courtney was shot...I told them about a tip I got on Facebook. 

It was from a guy who went by Randall Cunningham, like the football player. The note went like this. 

 SHAPEARL: “Good morning. I have to state I’m very sorry for your loss. I just wanted to see if this info may help you. I was coming home from the gym that night... 

This guy, Randall, lived in Belmont-Cragin. 

And, the night Courtney died, he saw three guys in a Grand Marquis who tossed a pistol. 

He called 911, twice.

He sent me photos along with the message. Mugshots. And a photo of the Grand Marquis that showed its license plate. 

I thanked him. And brought it all to police.

SHAPEARL: They called the police...

POLICE: That call is yeah. That's already been. That's already been addressed.  

They told us that they already knew about that...and that it was not related.

RENEE: So you've done the research and it's not related? 

POLICE: Yes. 

SHAPEARL: So this was a separate incident? 

POLICE: Separate incident. Correct. 

They said it wasn’t connected at all. But I still wanted to give them all the information Randall gave me anyway.

SHAPEARL: He gave me names of the two people, uh, that he saw in that vehicle. 

POLICE: What names did he provide to you? 

SHAPEARL: Um. [REDACTED]. He said it was three. He said it was three 

RENEE: But the third one ran. 

POLICE: Yea. That's all correct. That's all correct. The caller calls in immediately and this is well after your son was shot.

Detective Amato said Randall’s 911 call was way after Courtney’s shooting. To me, they were like, you know whatever lady. We’ve already decided that this is not credible. We’re going to take your information, but we’re not going to do anything with it. 

I moved on because I was grieving. I had to finish burying my son. I was planning Courtney’s funeral. And at the time I was still thinking police shot my son.

And when detectives dismissed it...I thought well maybe they’re right.

But I later came to find out from those 911 call logs that Randall’s first call wasn’t way later than Courtney’s shooting. It was 37 minutes after Courtney was shot.

So when the first 911 caller’s husband, Edgar, saw some gangsters in his alley in a Grand Marquis...it reminded me of Randall’s tip.

Alison and I, we went back and looked at the picture of the car Randall sent me on Facebook two years earlier.

And there it was…a Grand Marquis. and the license plate started with Z-4-4. Edgar had remembered the first two digits.

And when I went back to the police report about Elena….it said she saw the license plate C-4-4. C and Z…you know, they sound a lot a like. 

So the witness accounts matched up.  And the police never connected the dots. 

ALISON: We needed to talk to this Facebook tipster, Randall Cunningham, face to face. To find out who he really was, and see what else he knew about what happened that night. Any details that could help us.  

ALISON: My name is Alison. I got your number from Shapearl Wells, the mother of Courtney Copeland...

We texted and went to an address we found for him. No one was home so we left a note. 

That night we got a call back from Randall’s uncle, who’d found the note. He put us in touch with Randall. 

So, we made plans to meet. Randall said we could catch him after a showing of Black Panther.

Bill and I waited for Randall in the food court of a suburban Chicago mall. Over pretzels and smoothies. Black Panther is a long movie. 

Finally, he came out.

ALISON: Did your uncle tell you we tried to reach you at his place? 

RANDALL: He did. And then I was like, Why are the feds at the door? So I kind of thought you guys were feds. I'm like, “What's going on here?” And he told me it was related to the case and I'm like, “Wow!” 

He told us that even though he’d called 911 twice, he still wanted to reach out to Shapearl directly.

RANDALL: I saw Mr. Copeland's mother on the news and I felt terrible you know and I figured well why if you know if there's this type of information out why wouldn’t I want to try to reach out?  

We asked him to walk us through what he saw when he was driving home that night. From the beginning. 

RANDALL: I was coming home from an X-Sport gym. It was pretty late at night. As I was coming home, I noticed an individual was in the street and I almost hit him so I kind of looked at him and I could tell he was gang affiliated. Colors and his hat was cocked and he kind of threw a sign at me and I'm like whatever.

The guy who threw the gang sign looked like he’d been running, like something had happened. Randall went to turn onto his street when he noticed a car just sitting there…a Grand Marquis. 

RANDALL: A short time later the car starts moving. 

Randall parked, and ran to his apartment. He looked out a window and saw that the Grand Marquis had driven up the block, then backed up…

RANDALL: And then up the block again and then reversed and did it again like they were I don't know what was going on if they were intoxicated or whatever.

Randall called 911. The cops were on their way.

Then, he saw a guy get out of the car. It was the same one who had just thrown gang signs at him. 

And two more guys got out of the car. They tossed a weapon, and scurried away. So Randall called 911 again.

RANDALL: ...Probably put two and two together. And they quickly ditched a pistol. I heard like a loud thud. I mean you can hear like a metal clink sound like get thrown to the ground. So I actually went out to try to recover it. I didn't know what the hell came over me. I'm a concealed carry holder so I figured well let me go see what this is. There's kids in the neighborhood, so, you know, I didn't want to...I didn't want a kid to find it. 

But, before Randall could get there — one of the guys came back to retrieve what they threw. 

RANDALL: I know it was a pistol because the way they were holding it. It was shiny. And I told the cops, hey, this was the description of the individuals, which direction they fled and which way they went and whatnot.

The cops went up the block to get the guys.

The gun was gone, but Randall did find an iPhone. 

RANDALL: I actually went through it and there's a couple of videos of them drinking in a car. And then there is a video of them flashing a revolver. One was a revolver, the other gun was like a nine millimeter.

Randall offered to give the phone to police. 

RANDALL: They contacted me and they told me hey, you know, what’s going on. They were kind of brief about what they wanted and then they hung up. And then they called back again and I'm like yeah do you want me to come to the station or not? And they were like well no at this time no. Uh. So that was that.

The police never followed up. And then, Randall lost the iPhone in a move.  

We asked him about those mugshots from his Facebook message. 

How did he know who these guys were? 

RANDALL: Somebody that I knew in the neighborhood knew one of the individuals in the car. So, yeah I kind of asked what had happened and they said they were questioned and then they were pretty much released.

He said he doesn’t know the guys personally...but he does know of them.

RANDALL: I'm not gang affiliated. Never believed in gangs or none of that but I did believe in you know getting crimes figured out and solved and, you know, making sure justice is served. So...

There’s one more thing you need to know about Randall.

He’s a Chicago Police Officer.

SHAPEARL:  Alison, when you told me that Randall was a cop, I was shocked! But you know I was grateful more than anything because this information was vital.

ALISON: Did it make sense once you found out he was a cop?

SHAPEARL: I thought that well if he wasn’t a cop he was definitely trying to be one… because he knew exactly the words to say. And he knew what to give me. 

ALISON: So, the night Courtney died, when Randall called this in to 9-1-1, he was still a civilian -- he was just a guy in the neighborhood reporting what he saw. But now, he’s been a cop for more than two years. So we were a little surprised that he was still willing to talk to us.

SHAPEARL: I mean I was just so grateful for anybody to give me information. The fact that he was a cop, it made me have some type of hope that all cops aren’t bad. You know? I wish there were more Randalls on the Chicago Police Force. 

ALISON: I mean, what if he had never come forward? 

SHAPEARL: Without him coming forward, we wouldn’t be able to connect the dots. Corroborate what Edgar and Elena said about the car...and the guys inside it.

But the frustrating part is...it has taken us over two YEARS to get here. All of this should have been known on DAY ONE. 

And, it turns out…. it was all RIGHT THERE on the police radio the whole time.

DISPATCH: ...Male Hispanics wearing black hoodies were sitting in a silver Grand Marquis.....it appears that they threw a gun under the car. 

ALISON: When we asked the city for all the police dispatch in Courtney’s case, we got about an hour of tape back. 

The first 25 minutes had Courtney flagging down Officer Block for help...

POLICE: Gentlemen just said he was shot…

His license plates…

POLICE: Edward-5-5-1-7-9-0

His name…

POLICE: Victim is a male. His name is Courtney Copeland. 

And Elena calling in. 

POLICE: Shots fired at Fullerton and Long...Long and Fullerton, caller heard two shots on the block, I got no description.

But then later in the radio tape, there’s this….

POLICE: BLEEEEEEEEEP

For 35 minutes.

When we asked why this was bleeped out, the city told us -- again -- that it was unrelated.

SHAPEARL: We pushed back and had to wait months to get the full tape. And when you listen to it…come to find out, it’s completely related. 

DISPATCH: A Mercury, tinted windows, three occupants, circling the block twice, and then reversed. It may have a flat tire. It’s double-parked by the fire hydrant, there’s a male black red jacket on the corner flashing gang signs.

SHAPEARL: So once again, it’s up to us to investigate. 

We really wanted to know more about these gangsters Randall saw ditching this gun.

Two of the men actually were arrested up the block the night my son was killed.

DISPATCH: We have two male Hispanics wearing black hoodies were sitting in a silver Grand Marquis, it says that you drove by and it appears that they threw a gun under the car. They have since recovered whatever was thrown under there, and they’re walking northbound.

The dispatcher is relaying Randall’s 911 call to the police.  

She says: two male hispanics, wearing black hoodies, were sitting in a Grand Marquis. It appears they threw a gun under the car, which they’ve since recovered, and they’re walking northbound. 

POLICE: Got two possibles walking westbound on Belden toward Laramie.

And then an officer says “got two possibles walking westbound on Belden toward Laramie.

The police arrested two men who were charged with a parole violation for associating with a gang member -- which basically means they were just hanging out with each other. 

They were released the same day.

And the third guy?

DISPATCH: there’s a male black red jacket on the corner flashing gang signs.

He got away.

ALISON: We decided not to reveal their names because no one has been charged in connection with Courtney's case. And we don’t know who, if any, of these guys shot Courtney. What we do know is that police should have followed these leads.

SHAPEARL: But when we dug around, we found out that all three men Randall saw that night are members of the Stylers gang. All of them have been convicted of gun offenses. And all have done time. They all have really long rap sheets.

FACEBOOK: I got all these killers on standby…

This is a Facebook video of one of the men who was arrested that night. 

FACEBOOK: Bang, bang, bitch!

 FACEBOOK: Where everybody at? Take a shot for all the fallen brothers. A moment, we love y’all. We miss y’all. Kind of crazy though.

 At the time of Courtney’s death, he was on parole for an armed robbery sentence.

 And the man that Randall saw flashing gang signs? He’s the one that got away. He’s been arrested 16 times since 2010.

ALISON: Randall and Edgar identified the same type of car. But we wanted to see if they’d identify the same men inside the car, too. So we decided to do something the police had never done. A double blind photo lineup. 

We put together a big stack of mugshots to show Edgar. We included the mugshots Randall sent to Shapearl and men who looked similar to them. Plus, some random mugshots, too.

And because Edgar remembered someone in the vehicle with long hair, we included Alma’s neighbor. And other men with long hair. 

ALISON: Yeah. Hi Elena! Hi how are you! 

ELENA: I'm fine! 

ALISON: You got the little baby back here?

ELENA: Yea.

ALISON: Hey there!

I went over to Elena and Edgar’s again. Shapearl stayed back. We didn’t want Edgar to feel any extra pressure to make an identification. 

ALISON: Is it okay if we sit back here? 

ELENA: Yeah.

ALISON: Is this a good place?

ELENA: Yes.

ALISON: Thank you!

ELENA: (baby crying). Oh no, sorry.

We got set up in their living room.

ALISON: So, it's you know very unlikely that you'll be able to identify anyone so there's absolutely no pressure to do it.

I’d brought along one of our summer reporting fellows, Matilda. The line-up was double blind, because neither Edgar nor Matilda knew who was who in the mugshots. We didn’t want to influence Edgar to pick out certain people.

Elena stuck around to translate.

ELENA: [IN SPANISH TO EDGAR] Since it's been two years already since this happened, you might not be able to remember but if you can remember that’s good.

ALISON: Alright. So I'll have you both look at them and Matilda is going to go through... 

ELENA: [IN SPANISH TO EDGAR] They're going to show you photos and you're supposed to try to see if you remember any of them. She knows who they are and their names but she doesn’t. 

I left the room. And they went through the photos. One by one.  

EDGAR: [IN SPANISH] No, Not this one either. He wasn't...This one kind of looks like him a little bit. 

Edgar said, this one looks like him a little bit. 

ELENA: It maybe looks like him. 

MATILDA: Maybe. 

ELENA: Yea.

EDGAR: [IN SPANISH] Well, it’s been a long time. 

Photo after photo. No, he said. No, he said. No. 

Then... he turned to the next photo, and right away, he stopped…

ELENA: He thinks that one it is.

ELENA: Cuz he remembered the long hair.  

He’d landed on the guy with the long hair. Alma’s neighbor who lived by the church. That one, I think, is one of them. 

Edgar picked out two other mugshots. He was less sure about these. But one of them, was one of the guys arrested that night up the block from Randall.  

ALISON: All right. OK. That's all we had. Thank you very much. It just keeps going and going. You know we're just trying to help the family find some answers.

SHAPEARL: So, Randall and Edgar’s accounts were matching up more and more. 

ALISON: Okay, thank you Elena. Take care. 

ELENA: You’re welcome. You too. 

ALISON: Bye bye.

We felt like we were getting close to finding out who shot my son.

So we reached out to Courtney’s friend June again...because we wanted to see if he could talk to some of his gang contacts. We were trying to figure out if June knew any of the guys in the mugshots. 

 ALISON: When June asked around for us, he told us it was like opening Pandora’s box.

One day, two gang chiefs showed up at his door. They said “You’ve been asking a lot of questions.”

After that, June changed his number. And moved. When we caught up with him again...months later...he said he didn’t want to have an ear to the streets anymore. He wanted to have an ear to the stock market...because he was all about his cigar business.

He was done dealing information.

SHAPEARL: With June out of the picture, we chased a different lead. The car.

We wanted to track down that Grand Marquis. But it wasn’t registered to anyone any more.

We did find out who owned the Grand Marquis when Courtney was killed. Her first name was Crystal. We didn’t know anything about her, except for her address. So we hit the road.  

SHAPEARL: So, it’s not that far. 

ALISON: No, she’s pretty close but within a mile you know. 

On the way, we talked about Courtney. Like we always do.

SHAPEARL: He always said he was going to be famous. I don’t think this is what he wanted to be famous for. But he had this ominous feeling that he was going to die young. You know, I think he had some fear and some anxiety because his father and his grandfather also died of heart issues. We’re going where Alison?

ALISON: So, just take it a little further south. 

SHAPEARL: Okay. Anyway, the last anxiety attack he had was probably about six weeks before he died. And he was like, “ I think I’m having a heart attack.” And I’m like, “Courtney, you’re not having a heart attack. If you were having a heart attack, you wouldn’t be able to sit here and tell me to take you to the doctor.” So he was like, I just keep seeing myself, dying. Cuz I knew what it was. I knew he was having a panic attack. I told him you do what I told you to do, which is pray. We’re all here on borrowed time, Courtney. You know not thinking in six weeks, my son would be dead. That was the last, serious, serious conversation that I had with Courtney before he died. 

SHAPEARL: Crystal’s street was lined with matching brick 2-flats. 

We didn’t want to freak her out, so we left the recorder behind. 

We walked up to her building and rang the doorbell for her apartment. We waited. We’re about to walk away when a woman came out.

ALISON: It was Crystal. We showed her a picture of the Grand Marquis. She said yes, that used to be her car.

We told her about Courtney’s murder and that witnesses pointed to this car. She said she got rid of the car before 2016. On Craigslist.

SHAPEARL: We showed her the mugshots of the guys. She said she didn’t know any of them.

ALISON: We were bummed. We had hoped she could tell us more. We thanked her and got back into the van.

SHAPEARL: Well, I definitely think she’s lying. I think she does know more than what she’s saying. And um...she wants to make sure it’s not traceable back to her. I think when you showed her the pictures, that really threw her. ...What do you think, Alison?

ALISON: I don’t know. She seemed genuinely caught off guard and surprised, you know ? But I don’t know.

Shapearl was right. Crystal was lying to us.

A few weeks later, we were digging around in some court documents. And we saw Crystal was listed as the girlfriend of the guy who got away from the cops that night. They even have kids together.

We found some photos of him on Facebook — one of the pictures shows him at a gravesite with one of the two Stylers arrested the night Courtney died.

Now we had evidence connecting them to each other and the car.  

ALISON: We hadn’t heard from Randall in a while. Until one morning. November 1, 2018. He texted me.

“Did you hear what happened on Long and Belden? Female executed in front of her kids and friend over a car. Be safe in that neighborhood.”

My stomach dropped. It was the same corner where Courtney was shot. And…? The car was a BMW.

It was all over the news.

REPORTER: This is just absolutely heartbreaking. The victim’s family says she was out celebrating Halloween, and was trick-or-treating with her twin sister and her two nieces when a masked man jumped into their car and forced them to drive…

ANCHOR: Police want to find out why a young woman was murdered by a masked man who forced his way into the car. CBS 2’s V Nguyen is live in front of the 25th District Police Station in Belmont Cragin with more. 

The gunman made them drive several blocks before he shot and killed one of the women. On the same street where the gangsters in the Grand Marquis tossed the gun. The gunman took off running to Blackhawk Park. Stylers territory.

ALISON: OK. Are you there?

SHAPEARL: Yes I'm here.

I got on the phone with Shapearl right away.

ALISON: OK. So have you seen the news today? 

SHAPEARL: Yeah, you know that shooting right by Courtney's right? 

ALISON: Yeah, exactly right by Courtney. It was by Belden and Long. Right passed the church. 

SHAPEARL: I'm looking at the address and I'm like oh my god! This is like right here!  

I told her it was a BMW too.

SHAPEARL: Are you serious? This is like...This sent my PTSD right off the rails. 

ALISON: I know, I know. I'm sorry. 

We discussed whether we should go to the police with what we knew. 

SHAPEARL: But they have that information though, Alison. 

ALISON: I know they have it, but they don't, they don't understand its significance. But, I just... it doesn’t feel like they did the kind of detective work that we’ve done.

SHAPEARL:  I'm thinking like if you know...I know my son was gone. But did this other girl have to die? You know what I’m saying? It has always been about preventing things from happening to other people for me. If this was the same person, I'm hoping that they would actually follow up.

In the end, we decided we had a responsibility to come forward. If there was any chance our findings could help them solve this woman’s murder.  

SHAPEARL: I really didn’t want to meet with those jokers again but I sucked it up. Maybe this time if I came in with two white journalists, they’d actually listen to me.   

POLICE: Alison, it's Detective Amato, I spoke with you a little earlier... 

ALISON: So, we called to set something up.  

POLICE: I forwarded the message to Sergeant Mitchell. And one of the supervisors from here will be contacting you sometime...

SHAPEARL: A few days later, me, Alison and Bill were sitting down with Sergeant Mitchell and Detective Amato. They agreed to meet us only if I didn’t record. But the meeting was on the record. 

ALISON: What did you think about the police stipulating that you couldn’t record? 

SHAPEARL: I wish we would have recorded! I do…I promise you I wanted to. I really did. 

 We met for about two hours in the same conference room as before. But no one walked out on me this time. Sergeant Mitchell, he wore a tie and was red-faced as ever. Detective Amato wore a pullover. He barely took any notes. 

ALISON: Here’s what happened. We brought in two huge binders of documents. And we told police what we knew.

SHAPEARL: So, we walked them through our evidence.

Alison started by showing them a map. 

We highlighted the corner of Belden and Long by the church where the neighbors heard the shots that night. We told them we believed this is where Courtney was shot because his friends found broken glass on the street. And others, they saw skid marks. And it’s where Courtney usually parked, because he’d received tickets there before. 

At this point, they said we weren’t telling them anything they didn’t already know. 

ALISON: But we kept laying out the scene for them anyway. 

We explained that right before the incident, we believe Courtney was parking his car. He was on his phone, texting Alma, Facebook messaging his friend. He was distracted. 

That’s when someone shot him. Courtney turned and ducked, getting hit in the back.

When Courtney sped off towards the police station, a Grand Marquis quickly drove around the block – cutting through Elena and Edgar’s narrow alleyway, with the windows rolled down, giving Edgar a good look. Two years later, Edgar still remembered the car and the first few digits of the license plate. 

At this point, we showed police the two mugshots Edgar picked out in the double-blind lineup: the man with the Long Hair, Alma’s neighbor, and a second guy, a member of the Stylers gang, who was arrested that night. 

And THAT’s when the detectives said to each other that they needed to talk to Edgar. 

SHAPEARL: Then, we kept going with the play by play. 

Right after my son arrived at the hospital, Randall spotted the Grand Marquis on his block and called 9-1-1. 

When the guys heard police coming, they tossed the gun under the car nearby and took off on foot. But before police could retrieve the gun, someone came back for it.

Two of the guys were arrested up the block and released without questioning. The third one got away. We gave police his name. 

ALISON: We gave them a copy of Randall’s Facebook message, about the Grand Marquis, license plate, the weapon, the mugshots. 

SHAPEARL: That’s when one of the detectives said, “You never told me this!” 

But I did. Remember? I even have it on tape.

SHAPEARL: I also have uh some information that I received from another Facebook person randomly. They told me that um the night of uh the shooting there was a um. What kind of car...It looks like a Grand Marquis. I have that plate number. They said that they were looking out their window and they saw them throw a gun under the truck. They called the police. 

POLICE: That call is yeah. That's already been. That's already been addressed.

None of us were surprised about how detectives acted during this meeting. 

Detective Amato said he’d seen the video of Courtney outside the station. That much I already knew. But what surprised me was, he said he didn’t think Courtney was being combative. 

I didn’t know what to make of this. No one had their story straight. Was this a coverup? Or are they just this damn incompetent?

 At the end of our meeting, they told us they were going to assign new detectives to the case and work these new leads.  

We all hopped in Bill’s car in the parking lot to regroup.

ALISON: They called me dear. I had to bite my tongue so many times. It was so patronizing.

BILL: I think they called someone darling too. 

SHAPEARL: I felt that they were a little bit evasive when they talked about the two being arrested that night and why they couldn't... It was a murder. Why wouldn't you want to investigate them? They're known gang members there. They have a long rap sheet. So tell me why you couldn’t pull them in for questioning for this murder. Why wouldn't you do that? That didn’t make sense to me. Because they're already arrested and then you also had that 911 caller who is giving you a description of suspects that he's seen in the neighborhood who threw a gun underneath a car. So this is.. when they talk about we don't have enough evidence... We don't have enough probable cause to pull them over. Hell you get pulled over for a busted light in Chicago and they question you. They take you out your car. They they handcuff you. They do all types of stuff. So you telling me that you don't have enough evidence or enough probable cause. That's bullsh*t. 

ALISON: And I wanted to reiterate to them that you know in so far as they were frequently saying that these are leads not evidence. This is circumstantial. And it's sort of like. Yeah, I know. I am coming to you because another woman was killed in a BMW on that corner. Like, I'm not saying that this is solid evidence ready to go to court. I am saying that this is what I know about the case, and it's more than what you know about the case.

 SHAPEARL: Bill noticed something during the meeting. I had turned my face away because I was crying and I didn’t want the detectives to see. 

BILL: Were you crying out of frustration? 

SHAPEARL: I was crying because my son is still dead at the end of the day. My son dead. So it's just like. I must admit I'm finna get emotional now. So forgive me. You know because I'm like you know every time I get closer, I get a setback. And sometimes, I'll be like, OK. You have to stop. You have to stop for yourself. For your health. But you have to stop for your kids, for your husband because...This this whole murder has it's like a ticking time bomb that just like exploded in my life and you trying to take the millions of pieces and put em together. And so parts of me will never ever be whole. It’s an emotional strain on my family. My husband, my marriage. It's all of this. So the last couple of days, I've just been going through it.  

ALISON: We needed to step away.  I hoped that the police would finally do their jobs. 

SHAPEARL: I think that right now based on us leaving them with the information that we left them with that they're just going to appease us by passing us off to some new detectives. Nothing is going to happen. They're not going to interview. They're not going to follow up. They're not going to even investigate anything other than what they've already done. My son will still be a cold case in Chicago.  

ALISON: Alright. So, it’s been more than a year since we sat down with detectives. Shapearl, what’s happened in the last year? 

SHAPEARL: Absolutely nothing. You hear crickets. They haven’t called me. They haven’t given me any updates. They haven’t contacted any of the witnesses that we gave them. I haven’t heard a peep from police.

We’ve checked in with Edgar, Randall, Elena...all of these witnesses...and they haven’t contacted them. 

POLICE: Press 3. Or to speak to an operator press zero...Please speak after the tone. Hi Detective Bausch, my name is Shapearl Wells, I’m the parent of Courtney Copeland, I was calling to get a status update on his case. He was murdered on March 4, 2016 and they told me that you..

A couple later after I left this message, Alison actually ran into one of the detectives on Courtney’s case. Detective Amato. 

She bumped into him at Sesame Street Live. 

She was there with her family...and Amato was working security.

She said hello, and reminded him about the case. 

Two weeks later, Amato called me. I was at church.

AMATO: Hi, Ms. Wells, this is Detective Amato over at Area North, I was wondering if you could give me a call at your earliest convenience.

I called him as soon as I got home. Then I hopped back on the line with Alison.

ALISON: OK, hey Shapearl.

SHAPEARL: Hey. OK, so basically his call was based on him wanting to all of a sudden put Courtney’s case in the cold case file and make it a profile on their website. 

ALISON: What does that mean? 

SHAPEARL: So he wants to put Courtney photo everything on to the website stating that they’re looking for information. 

ALISON: Yeah. Did he say he had not talked to Edgar yet? 

SHAPEARL: He ain’t talked to Edgar 

ALISON: Right. 

SHAPEARL: He basically admitted that he ain’t talked to Edgar

ALISON: And what about?

SHAPEARL: Or Randall!

ALISON:  Um...So they basically didn't follow up on our leads over the last year and now they're wanting to all of a sudden put it in the cold case unit. 

SHAPEARL: Right. Mhmm

ALISON: Well, how are you feeling? 

SHAPEARL: I feel like he was blowing smoke. Because it was like, all, I'm thinking about your son's case, and I've been trying to...whatever, dude. 

ALISON: Well...

SHAPEARL: And he was like, well, what do you want to meet with me again? And we'll go over everything. I'm like, yeah. 

ALISON: I mean, we already gave him everything. 

SHAPEARL: And I was trying to tell him. So that’s what we were wondering. Why didn’t you speak to Elena’s husband. Because I said… I basically told him, I said,  that information matched. Elena’s husband said a Grand Marquis. Randall said a Grand Marquis. And I said it wasn’t that far in between from the initial shooting. 

ALISON: Wow

SHAPEARL: You sat on this stuff for a year and you ain’t did nothing. 

When I watch the news…I keep seeing over and over again whose lives matter...and whose cases matter enough to solve. No matter how many times I meet with the police, my son’s murder still doesn’t seem to matter to them.  

But this whole thing is so much bigger than who pulled the trigger on my son. It’s so much bigger than Courtney’s case. 

Things don’t have to be this way. And there’s so much more I’ve got to do.